Process manufacturers have traditionally used a variety of systems for managing a manufacturing process. These systems may include an enterprise system, which may contain customer service, resource planning systems, and other centralized functions. The typical prior art enterprise systems are at a high level and are relatively removed from the actual manufacturing process. Typical resource planning systems may be accomplished by a material requirements planning system that tracks inventory and facilitates in planning for the inventory required in a particular production run.
Typical prior art environmental systems are often used to generate reports required by the government. By government regulations, manufacturers using hazardous materials must submit reports to the government that include, for example, amounts and types of hazardous material manufactured, processed, or otherwise used in the manufacturing process. Also, under right-to-know laws, employees have a right to know the types of hazardous material, if any, to which they are exposed. Environmental systems assist in managing this type of data and in generating reports.
Prior art health, safety, and training systems are typically used to track exposure of employees to hazardous materials and to determine preventative measures. The system may contain the various exposures and keep track of any employee exams or training. An employee who is exposed to hazardous materials may undergo periodic exams to determine if the exposure has caused any health problems. Employees may also have training regarding how to handle or work with hazardous materials, and the training is designed to minimize the potential for injury or exposure to the material.
Prior art low-level systems used in the manufacturing process may include area/unit control systems that interface and control the actual machinery on a shop floor in a manufacturing process. Workers on the shop floor may use data obtained with the enterprise system to determine inputs to the area/unit control system. For example, the enterprise system may indicate the quantity of a particular resource required in a manufacturing process. On the shop floor, a worker may obtain that quantity information and use it in the area/unit control system to adjust the manufacturing process to accommodate the desired quantity.
Between the prior art enterprise, area/unit control, and other manufacturing systems, there exists an information gap. These prior art systems operate independent of one another and typically use different product definitions in different and incompatible databases. For example, in traditional process manufacturing systems, the environmental and health, safety and training systems are stand-alone systems that operate independent of both one another and any other system used to control the manufacturing process. Accordingly, the systems are unable to efficiently communicate with one another or other manufacturing systems system. In order for these systems to communicate, either data must be manually reentered into one system from another or complex interface programs must be written to transfer data between the incompatible databases.
Another type of stand-alone system that may be used in a manufacturing process is a system for developing new products. When developing new products, particularly in the process industry, time to market can be critical in obtaining a competitive advantage. A company that is late in getting a product to the market may end up obtaining a much smaller portion of the market share, even though the company's product may be in no way inferior to the first product on the market. As a result, maintaining maximum efficiency in the development process is essential.
Traditionally, companies develop new products by shuffling papers or files from one person to another throughout the development process. Each person typically evaluates the product in his or her role within the company and then pass the "new product file" on to the next person. This process can be slow and inefficient due to the large interchange of paper documentation.
Alternatively, there is some availability of commercial product development systems, which provide electronic documentation of the development process and attempt to automate the process. These systems, however, are not integrated with a plant-level manufacturing system, which means that, once the new product is finalized and ready to be commercially produced, the information from the product development system must be entered into a manufacturing control system in order to set up the entire production run. These system, therefore, assist in new product development, but do not necessarily assist in determining parameters to be used in the plant-level system for manufacturing the new product.
Even though the manufacturing systems described above may be crudely interfaced together, they are not truly integrated. As a result, the systems have inefficiency that could only be resolved by true integration.
A need exists, therefore, for a truly integrated manufacturing system that utilizes a common database structure. In particular, a need exists for integrating environmental and health, safety and training systems within plant-level manufacturing system. There is an additional need, particularly in the process industry, for a new product development system that is completely integrated within the plant-level manufacturing system.